Re: need help with an explanation

-----Original Message-----
From: Catenae Web Sites <catenae(at)catenae.com>
To: Kristin Henry <krhenry(at)sirius.com>; HWG Techniques
<hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Date: Monday, June 19, 2000 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: need help with an explanation


>there may come a time in the
>not so distant future when such strict stuctures *are* necessary to
>differentiate between document types. At that point, sloppy coding
>practices will have to be cleaned up, so why start with them

(applause)
Sure, (*some*) browsers might render (*some*) pages without all the
"troublesome little tags", but does anyone really want to take that chance?
Particularly when it only takes an instant to do it right to begin with?
And here's another one-word explanation: consistency.  If you have 100 pages
that have the tags and 1 that doesn't, what are you inclined to do?  That's
what conventions are all about.  Good coding is like good baseball, if you
play by the rules, you get to stay in the game.

Always think in future terms.  Look at your own situation.  You're coming in
behind someone who has a different concept than you.  What about the person
who follows you?  I shudder to think of where some software programs would
be right now if programmers hadn't followed the conventions of their
programming languages.  It's the "it renders, so who cares" attitude that
makes so many so-called hardcore language programmers look to HTML
developers as "script puppies", "code wannabies" and "slop hackers".
Believe me, I've heard this plenty from the back-end folks I work with and
when you look at a lot of HTML source code, it's easy to see why.  It's
probably the least structured language out there and historically sloppy
HTML coders have a more difficult time moving into something like Perl, PHP,
or even Javascript, if they've cultivated the attitude that "it renders, so
who cares."

---------------------
Karin Ransdell - kransdell(at)squishedmosquito.com
Escapade Development Team
Squished Mosquito, Inc.
http://www.squishedmosquito.com - http://www.escapade.org

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